Abstract
Summary: A variety of studies demonstrated that some forms of memory for music are spared in dementia, but only few studies have investigated patients with early stages of dementia. In this pilot-study we tested working memory for music in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and early stage Alzheimer's disease (AD) with a newly created test. The test probed working memory using 7 gradually elongated tone-lines and 6 chords which were each followed by 3 similar items and 1 identical item. The participants of the study, namely 10 patients with MCI, 10 patients with early stage AD and 23 healthy subjects were instructed to select the identical tone-line or chord. Subjects with MCI and early AD showed significantly reduced performance than controls in most of the presented tasks. In recognizing chords MCI- participants surprisingly showed an unimpaired performance. The gradual increase of the impairment during the preclinical phase of AD seems to spare this special ability in MCI.
Translated title of the contribution | Working memory for music in patients with mild cognitive impairment and early stage Alzheimer's disease |
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Original language | German |
Pages (from-to) | 11-20 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Neuropsychiatrie |
Volume | 27 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Mar 1 2013 |
Keywords
- Chords
- Dementia
- Music
- Tone lines
- Working memory